Weird stuff with div - thats why there is white space underneath the title

I don't know what is happening with this blogger template,... suddenly I noticed they put in a <div style="clear:both;"></div>
which forces my last posting to start underneath the right menu. Is there a way to avoid this? It seems that Blogger
puts it in there itself, so I can't remove it...
Update: Thanks to the guys, who put in the comments, I got this fixed, added an extra line in my blogger template "div { clear: none !important; }"

SharePoint and MCMS Tools Galore V3

This is already the 3d version of the SharePoint and MCMS tools Galore list - lots of interesting stuff have been released lately - go check them out,...

SharePoint toolsuites

Coras workplace suiteSuite with
rollup webparts (for news,documents,tasks,...), navigation controls and full language localization (This is way cool...)

Syntergy Provide lots of modules such as
replication technologies for SharePoint, bulkloader, audit for SharePoint,...

Tools for SharePoint from SPSDev.com - contains Pocket Portal,
My Team OrgChart WebPart, Bulk upload

Search

Entopia K-Bus for SharePoint Portal Server: Adds extra information discovery capabilities, also allows
SharePoint to index Documentum, Opentext,...

WSS PowerSearch - The developers ofthis product also have
some other nice SharePoint tools, check out PowerRecycle and PowerNav

Behaviortracking from Mondosearch

Coveo SharePoint search

SharePoint Advanced Search Tools (Gotdotnet)

Ontolica - enhanced search interface for the SPS search engine

Longitude from BA-Insight - Extension on SharePoint Search

MCMS (Microsoft Content Management Server)

MCMS Manager 3.0

Telerik RAD controls for MCMS

Backup/Data Recovery/Antivirus

SharePoint document recovery tool : Free download from Stephane Cordonnier

McAfee Portal Shield Antivirus solution

AVG SharePoint Server Edition web site Antivirus solution

Sybari Antigen for SharePoint

TrendMicro PortalProtect Antivirus solution

RSS

Syndication Generator 2.0

RSS Reader webpart for SharePoint

RSS feed for SharePoint

Workflow

NetPoint Solutions

Factiva:Search and workflow tools for Office 2003

Captaris Teamplate: This workflow toolset even adds a module for fax based workflow "RightFax Workflow wizard

Skelta workflow .Net

K2.Net

Nintex smartlibrary

Smart workflow from LMR Solutions

DataLan FlowBuilder

ActiveSPS Workflow Solutions

Biztalk adapter for SharePoint

Document, Records and Digital Assets Management

Meridio: .Net software which integrates seamlessly into SharePoint and provides records management
features needed to be compliant with standards such as Sarbanes-Oxley, US DOD 5015.2 records management standards,...

Towersoft

Wisdom

Mobius

Equilibrium MediaRich for SharePoint- digital asset management (DAM) solution to Microsoft Office Systems 2003.

Workshare Professional -Secure document compliance

Utilities & developer tools

SharePoint Explorer : another free tool which you can use to explore the SharePoint object model

Admin report kit for SPS 2003: configuration and usage reporting tool for SPS 2003

SharePoint site permission manager (Gotdotnet)

SharePoint explorer for VS.Net

BlueDogLimited Webpart Tool Kit

CAML Query Builder (U2U)

SharePoint Configuration analyzer

CAMLViewer 1.0 (Stramit)

James Milne's SharePoint CSS Skinner

Office Web Components

RSS Feed for SharePoint Lists (U2U)

SharePoint Import Export tools (Gotdotnet)

SPS Portal 2003 Search Web Service Tester

Windows SharePoint Services: Usage Blob Parser

Metalogix - Migration tools for SharePoint and MCMS

ViewPoint - SharePoint navigation and modeling tool

InfoPath

CaveDigital XML Form WebPreviewer Web Part- allows users without InfoPath to view the contents of forms on their web browser.

AchieveForms

InfoView

NetXPert InfoScope

WebParts

Acar Learning Technologies - Poll webpart for SharePoint, Quiz webpart for SharePoint

CSEG Rollup webpart

FluidNature image webpart

Calendar webpart

My ChangePasswordControl Webpart for Sharepoint

Office Live meeting webparts

Omnisys Power Aggregator webpart

High availability

Neverfail for SharePoint- Replication, switchover, failover and switchback for SharePoint

DoubleTake

Business Intelligence & Reporting

DSP Portal Edition : Adds webparts which can display information from OLAP cubes

Omnisys Power Gauge - displays measurements based on various types of data sources, using dynamic and configurable gauges.

Crystal Reports SPS integration kit

BI Portal

SQL Server 2000 report pack for SPS

Miscellaneous

Brightwork: adds MSF (Microsoft Solution Framework) on top of SharePoint

Ratings & expert module for SharePoint

K-Wise - Migration tools

Factiva Modules to integrate news sources into your WSS/SPS (Factiva is a Dow Jones & Reuters company)

Advis site navigator Navigation and UI enhancements

Omnisys Probability Impact Matrix webpart - based on WSS risk list from Project Server 2003

Offline Portal capabilities

Digilink revelation Lets mobile users synchronise offline information with SPS and WSS

IORA Another solution for offline SharePoint usage

Groove - software firm that Microsoft acquired a couple of months ago, they sell amongst other Mobile workspace for SharePoint

sharepoint

More about SharePoint and Lotus integration/migration

Michael Greth posted an item about SharePoint und Lotus Notes, here are some other usefull links for those of you who need to know more about migrating or integrating Lotus with SharePoint:

Coexistence between Lotus Domino and a SharePoint Portal Server 2003

Lotus Notes coexistence with Exchange and .Net (HP presentation - very marketing oriented, lots of FUD...)

Proposion - integrating lotus notes with Microsoft.Net

SharePoint webparts for Lotus

SharePoint migration tools (also for Lotus)

Microsoft Application Analyzer 2003 for Lotus Notes

sharepoint

Stuff I tried out today...

It is a nice sunny day here in Belgium, so I'm sitting on my terrace with my portable, going through blogs and trying out new stuff that, here are 2 nice tools I tried out today:

NUnitAsp: Tool for automatically testing ASP.NET web pages. It's an extension to NUnit.

AJAX.Net: Asynchronous JavaScript with XmlHttpRequest

SharePoint Portal Server V3.0 and other speculations

Bill has put together some insights about Office 12 and SharePoint Portal Server v3.0 - of course he knows more, he just can't tell us.

Here are some of the things I'm betting on (or hoping for ...):

SharePoint and CMS will merge together into one product, I guess SharePoint will be the main component and CMS will be available to plug into SharePoint. This model will more or less ressemble the model that IBM uses with their IBM workplaces

There will be more extensive support for workflow out of the box, my guess is that they will base it on the Biztalk rule engine - which works pretty good- and add extra webparts for administering human workflow on top. Although you can never rule out that Microsoft will finally acquire one of their workflow partners, be it K2.Net or Captaris

IBF will be integrated into Visual Tools for Office and will be further pushed as a way of integrating different systems - a statement I heard today "IBF is the next generation smart tags". Development with 1.5 has already become a lot easier but especially the Office side - smart tag recognizer still isn't easy enough

Integration of features of the newly acquired Groove product set into Office 12 - I especially like the Mobile Workspace for SharePoint. Although there are still some serious limitations which need to be solved - See Limitations in using Groove to Offline SharePoint

Possibility to publish InfoPath forms on your SharePoint Portal Server through InfoPath Server - clients do not need a full blown version of InfoPath anymore

Full localization of the SharePoint environment - it will be possible to change languages at runtime - this information will be dependent on the user who logs into your portal

Single document security (This is definitely a must - we have done a huge project based on SharePoint which needed single document security and I can assure you, it is not easy ...) with further enhancements to Rights Management Server

Lots of emphasis on charting, scorecards and data analysis - Maestro will use SharePoint as its main UI

Full integration with lots and lots of different Microsoft products and solutions, SQL Reporting Services, Project Server, Team Foundation Server, Biztalk,...

SharePoint will be RSS enabled out of the box - it will possible to create RSS driven alerts on all items in SharePoint

More consistency in the way that SharePoint uses site definitions - admin and user facing pages should both rely on the same server controls to render their content. For those of you who have been playing with AlternateCSS and AlternateHeader now what I'm talking about

A plugin for VS.Net to edit site definitions - we know that CAML isn't going away, but at least provide us with better tools...

Better integration of WSS and SPS - it would be quite nice that when a site gets deleted it also automatically gets unlisted from the site directory

More options to troubleshoot SharePoint search - this is one huge black box for the moment and quite troublesome if you encounter problems

Support for 64-bit (of course since this is a common engineering criteria)

Update 23 june:I just read this article by Kay Slagman and it pointed me to another thing - mobile support for SharePoint. I don't think this is a must however, ...

Update 23 june:Support for database replication - especially when you have SharePoint Portal Servers in different locations, this is a must

For those of you who have more ideas, just leave a comment ... I guess everybody who has done or is doing a SharePoint project still has a list of "most wanted" features...
sharepoint

More SharePoint and CMS stuff

Telerik has released r.a.d. Editor WebPart - you can download the beta version

Creating a localized webpart

Dataview webpart and date fields

Developer project kick start for SharePoint products and technologies on Gotdotnet - also take a look at these instructions Developer Project Kick Start for SharePoint : Beware of the install process and the Nant Nunit Version

Action CAML Queries with the CAML Query Builder

Adding an additional search to the WSS search page

SharePad project on Gotdotnet

Getting Back to Normal: SharePoint Backup and Disaster Recovery

TechEd Braindump: SharePoint Portal Server 2003: Best Practices for an Implementation

sharepoint

Microsoft common engineering criteria

I followed a presentation about Biztalk 2004/2006 when I first heard about the Microsoft Common Engineering Criteria, these are a common set of guidelines and requirements that each infrastructure server must meet. They also give a pretty good idea about what to expect from future releases of MSCMS, SharePoint and Biztalk, I especially like the following:

64-bit support

.NET Connected

MOM management pack support at launch

Virtual Server support

There are of course a lot more, read more about it.

AlternateCSS, SharePoint:CssLink control and FrontPage 2003

Todd wrote an article a while ago about how you can get the AlternateCSS attribute of the project element in ONET.XML to work - basically you have to replace the hard coded stylesheet link in the aspx pages with the <SharePoint:CssLink DefaultUrl="/_layouts/1033/styles/ows.css" runat="server"/> control. Remember always create a new custom site definition when doing this - see Creating a site definition from an existing site definition. Unfortunately when you open a site based on the altered aspx file in FrontPage 2003, the stylesheet is not shown correctly (... or not at all for that matter)sharepoint

Add a SharePoint document library to the "My Places bar"

A very easy but usefull trick:
In Office XP and Office 2003, the My Places bar appears in the left pane of the Open and Save As dialog boxes in Office XP programs. If you open a word document from a document library and you click File>Save As... the Save As dialog opens. Now you can click in top of the Save as dialog Tools > "Add to My Places". From now on you can immediately save a document to this document library by selecting the appropriate icon in the My Places bar without having to go through the list of Network Placessharepoint

How to determine if a Microsoft CMS user has administrator rights

Excellent posting from Stefan about how to determine if a Microsoft CMS user has administrator rights (Update : it seems that the idea originally came from Chester)

The CmsHttpContext has a UserCacheKey property which is used by ASP.NET output caching with MCMS in combination with the VaryByCustom="cmsrole" method to ensure that content can be varied for different user roles.

The MCMS help gives the following statement for this property:

UserCacheKey is guaranteed to be the same for two users, of those two users are both members of all the same MCMS rights groups. UserCacheKey will also be the same for two users if both users are MCMS administrators. In contrast, UserCacheKey is different for two users if those two users do not meet either of the above two requirements.

Looking at the value returned for this property for MCMS administrators shows that always "A" is returned!

So a simple check for this property for the string "A" is sufficient to identify if the current user is a MCMS administrator or not!

Actually there is no guarantee that this property value will be the same with the next service pack. But the chance that this gets changed is very low.

The way I always did it was creating a CMS channel where only an administrator had rights on, next you just tried to read in this channel. Off course non-admins would have no access. I guess the way of working described above is a lot cleaner...

mscms

Microsoft announces Acrylic - a new professional graphics software

Microsoft is going for some Adobe market share, you can now download a beta of a new professional graphics software, called Acrylic

See what other bloggers have to say about it:

Acrylic - for Professional Designers

Hot - Microsoft Code Named Acrylic

Microsoft release public beta of Acrylic - a new graphics app

IBF vs VSTO 2005

Some interesting statements from Carlo Poli - he states that using IBF - even IBF 1.5 - is way to difficult especially the smart tag part. A demo video of VSTO 2005 with smart parts shows how easy it is with VSTO... so if IBF 1.5 doesn't get integrated into the next version of Visual Tools for Office, it seems dead in the water. I wonder what the IBF guru has to say about it ...

MCMS vNext and MCMS SP2 info

Interesting info from Andrew Connell (MCMS News from TechEd USA 2005 :: Day 2 (Yes, there's more!!!))

MCMS 2002 Service Pack 2: Expect this to be released after the .NET 2.0 Framwork is released (BTW: today’s keynote at TechEd announced that Visual Studio .NET 2005 and SQL Server 2005 will be released to manufacturing [RTM] the week of November 7, 2005). The primary focus of SP2 will be to add .NET 2.0 Framework and SQL Server 2005 support to MCMS. Yes, you how have access to using master pages (just no placeholders within the master pages… that’s not supported) and all the other great features that are provided by the next generation of ASP.NET 2.0. This does not mean I’m not saying that you can touch the MCMS database, you just can host your database on the new platform. The only thing that isn’t supported is using the new ASP.NET 2.0 web parts within MCMS templates.

MCMS vNext aka: futures: Yes, speculation can now end in the newsgroups and blogs that it's now confirmed there is a new version of MCMS in the works. When will it be available? MCMS is now part of the Office System. At the recent CEO Summit, Bill Gates announced that Office 12 will ship at the end of 2006 and you can expect a beta at the end of 2005/beginning of 2006. Because MCMS is in now part of the Office System, it will fall in line with those dates. Packaging & licensing is still being hashed out so no details on that. Again, just stay tuned for news in the coming months.

mscms

Office 12 Preview site released

The buzz volume surrounding Office 12 is going up... an Office 12 preview site has been released (Source:
Office 12 Preview Site online

SharePoint - to support or not to support...

Interesting to see how much discussion there is about customizing SharePoint and about what is considered to be supported and what not... I guess the problem is that SharePoint has been released for almost 1.5 years now and still the documentation is being written. In the meanwhile developers had create actual solutions for customers using lots of tricks and workaround, because lets face it, developing on the SharePoint platform is not very easy.

Well, enough whining, here's an overview of articles about supported or not:

Supported… not!!

More tunes in the "unsupported" blues... adding web parts to Forms pages unsupported!

Modifying site definitions, changes in Onet.xml, adding AllUsersWebPart element

About Site Definitions and making waves inside Microsoft walls;-)

sharepoint

VS.Net 2005 - out 7th november 2005

It seems that VS.Net 2005 will be actually released in 2005 - Source: VSTS Tip: Mark November 7th on your calendar ....

SharePoint - interesting stuff

RSS extensions for SharePoint

Sharepoint Web Part caching

Using the 3 GB switch with SharePoint

A Quick Way To Change The Look Of The Web Part Title Bars For Your Sharepoint Environment

SharePoint statistics: the sources

Retrieving SharePoint Site Information in an ASP.NET Web Application

Packaging and deploying webparts

Tzunami SharePoint designer tool

WebCast - SharePoint performance and capacity planning -Best practices and lessons learned

Blogparts for download and Documentation in pdf format

CAML Builder 2.0.0.1, whats new in this version CAML Query Builder V2

Adjusting the displaysize of your fields in SharePoint

SharePad - add full SharePoint document library support for your own document editor with FrontPage RPCs

SharePoint utility suite

sharepoint

Supported and unsupported scenarios for working with custom site definitions and custom area definitions in SharePoint

I don't really like this Microsoft KB - it is amazing how limiting it is - Supported and unsupported scenarios for working with custom site definitions and custom area definitions in SharePoint. It seems that Modifying site definitions - changes in Onet.xml , adding AllUsersWebPart element is an unsupported scenario as well... too bad. PS It seems that some people share my opinion - see SharePoint custom site definitions... I'm lost...sharepoint

WSRP .Net Framework and SharePoint

Netunity is a solution vendor which has build WSRP .NET Framework The WSRP .NET Framework is a comprehensive portlet development framework supporting the WSRP 1.0 specification for building compliant applications and content solutions based on XML standards and a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Verified against the major portal vendors, the framework includes an extensive class library and Visual Studio Wizards to help you easily create WSRP producers and portlets. The framework does not require the installation of a portal or employ the use of proprietary services and content management systems.


I wonder if this also works with SharePoint - I haven't seen a lot of talk about WSRP and SharePoint except for some projects on GotDotNet - WSRP webpart toolkit for SharePoint and the WSRP web service toolkit. And what about webparts in the next version of SharePoint or webparts developed in ASP.Net 2.0

sharepoint

InfoPath - third party tools

One of the major shortcomings of InfoPath is the fact that you need a full blown InfoPath on every client which needs to fill in a form. I guess that this is one of the major reasons why InfoPath hasn't really taken of as a new electronic forms solution. There are however some vendors which sell solutions to solve the full client problem:

AchieveForms

InfoView

NetXPert InfoScope

There is also a nice article from Microsoft called Sharing InfoPath forms with users who do not have InfoPath...

Microsoft Application Analyzer 2003 for Lotus Notes

Microsoft Application Analyzer 2003 for Lotus Notes has been made available - this tool helps in determining the size and scope of Lotus Notes application migration projects. The Analyzer consists of two parts: the Data Collector and the Data Processor. The Data Processor interprets the data from the Data Collector and creates detailed reports that indicate the complexity and scale of the application and recommendations on how to most efficiently migrate applications to Microsoft platform application environment. The tool is used in the pre-sales and sales phases and is the foundation for an implementation plan.

Quite a nice tool, when you are considering a migration from Lotus to SharePoint.

MSN Search toolbar released

MSN Search Toolbar has finally been released,... I have been using the beta for a couple of months and I have to say I'm quite impressed especially with Windows Desktop Search ....
Go download it

SOA - more then just hype

It is amazing how much talk there is from different vendors about Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Unfortunately I have to agree with Richard Turner - most of the it is just marketing talk. SOA is an abstract notion - it is not linked to products or vendors, it should be generally applicable to any given distributed systems platform.

Richard puts it even a little bit harsher "The whole SOA/ESB thing is all hype, people! Once you come to realize and accept that, the world becomes clearer. You don’t believe me? Define what SOA is. Then try and find one other person that agrees with you wholeheartedly. If you’re lucky enough to manage this, try and apply your definition of SOA across more than one platform / technology. Repeat for ESB. Good luck!" (See

Does SOA Exist?

) but he also sees the advantages of Service Orientation.

I think the general concept is quite interesting but I'm not really sure when I will ever see an actual implementation of SO design. I recently took a look at FABRIQ recently - which combines service principles, one-way multi-transport messaging, queuing networks and ideas from autonomous agents into a single framework. Fabriq is no services framework but does show the complexities involved when creating a complete SO design. The Microsoft Patterns & Practices group has also published an “Enterprise Development Reference Architecture” which also provides some interesting guidance but which I think is quite complex as well.

If you want to know more, check out these interesting postings about SOA lately:

On SOA, Indigo and Services

Just what is an ESB, anyway? Part II

Web services standards can sometimes inhibit SOA development, some say

Radovan responds re SOA

SOA revisited (again)

Call increases for SOA clarity

Does ESB Exist?

Does SOA Exist?

The SOA reference model

What does SOA really mean? One big hype machine

"SOA" doesn't really exist, does it?

Maestro - Microsoft Realtime Reporting Server

Found this on Mauro's blog - "Planned Microsoft Realtime Reporting Server Could Rock Analytics World", ... It seems that Microsoft is going to launch a private beta of Microsoft Realtime reporting server codename "Maestro" this summer. Most of the BI tools which exists at the moment are mainly working on snapshots of data - realtime or near realtime reporting would be a very important move. A full article about it can be found at http://ie.bizintelligencepipeline.com/159907104 . Maestro will be based on a combination of technologies - SQL Reporting Services, SQL Notification Services and the Business Scorecard accelerator... I'm however wondering if it will use SQL 2005 as well as SQL 2000. And what about SharePoint since it builds on the Scorecard accelerator.

sharepoint

SharePoint Portal Server e-mail alerts not send

It seems that I already published this before - but I got some emails about it so here's the link again

SharePoint Portal Server e-mail alerts not send...

sharepoint

Internet explorer and PDFs

Did you ever notice that PDFs seem to open slow in Internet Explorer? I just found out why... it seems that there are in fact multiple requests to your webserver when trying to open a PDF. In IE 4.x and 5 it uses three requests. For IE 5.5+ it uses two. For a complete reference goto http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q293792

SharePoint issue list reports and Office 2003 web parts

Windows SharePoint Services contains out of the box an issue list which you can use to track change request or problem reports about your product. If you go to the issue list you will also notice that there are some reports available for these issue lists. The great thing about these reports is that if Microsoft Office 2003 English Web Parts and Components (Freely downloadable) is installed on the server, the report generator for an issues list creates rich charts for report types. When a user clicks one of the report types on the Report page (reporthome.aspx), the user is directed to reportrich.aspx, which displays the chart. If the package is not installed, the user is instead directed to report.aspx and a rich chart is not displayed.

The page which actually generates these reports is quite interesting as well, it is located in the Local_Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033 folder and gives an interesting example about how you can use a sharepoint list as a basis for a graph generated with Office 2003 web components. One of the greatest flaws about the Office 2003 webparts is that you can only use ODBC datasources, it would have been a lot better if they used the data source catalog like the dataview webpart. I guess that if you take a look at the code in reportrich.aspx, you will get some nice guidelines about how to accomplish this.

Fabrikam released

Picked this up from Arno Nels blog - Fabrikam has been released. For those of you who don't know it, ...

In this solutions learning platform, developers at a fictitious enterprise created solutions for common business processes. FabriKam, a furniture manufacturer with about 10,000 employees, faces business problems and challenges not unlike many of today's enterprises. Starting with a set of realistic infrastructure assumptions, FabriKam developers built six solutions and four reusable components that address FabriKam's needs in innovative ways, with extensive use of Web services, XML, integration of front-end applications and back-end systems, and full use of the Office environment with which most information workers are already familiar. The FabriKam 3.1 Solutions Learning Platform represents the essence of the efforts of FabriKam developers.

SharePoint Document Library webpart - kick it off GotDotNet

I definitely agree with Stramits posting about the Document Library webpart - Document Library Explorer and GotDotNet : surprise it's not free sometimes. I think GotDotNet should only show webparts which are at least free to use. Off course it is not easy to keep these things off GotDotNet.

This webpart is nothing more than a marketing trick from the guys at http://www.professionalsharepoint.com/dle/ - because you can't use it without registering for a free trial. Hey,... maybe it is a good idea to start reverse engineering the code, ... (just kidding ...)

The views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

Indigo on MSDN

It seems that MSDN TV is doing a series about Indigo:

Introduction to Indigo

Build services today

Indigo security in a nutshell

A must see for all solution architects...

Modifying site definitions - changes in Onet.xml , adding AllUsersWebPart element

All sites and areas in SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services are based on custom site definitions - these are all the files you can find in the 60 hive -
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\1033\ directory (1033 is the locale ID for English - so if you have a Portal in another language you will another number). In this directory you will find a number of directory which contain all the templates for different site and area types. For a nice overview check out Heathers blog - SharePoint site definitions - Mapping files to pages on a SharePoint sites

One of the interesting files you will find in these directories is onet.xml - this file contains the bigger part of how your site/area will look like - common customizations for this file are

Specify an alternate cascading style sheet (CSS) file, JavaScript file, or ASPX header file for a site definition.

Modify navigation areas for the home page and list pages.

Add a list definition as an option to the Create page.

Add a document template for creating document libraries.

Define a configuration for a site definition, specifying the lists, modules, files, and Web Parts that are included when a site is instantiated.

The last option was something I wanted to try - including webparts when a site is instantiated. Basically I wanted all of the "My sites" to contain an extra webpart on the private side.
Steps I took:

Write a custom webpart (and even test it, if you feel like it...)

Add a strong name to the webpart assembly and deploy it to the GAC

Deploy the webpart on the server with stsadm.exe

The last step is modifying onet.xml for My Site (located in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\1033\SPSMSITE\XML directory) - in this XML file you will find a Modules element and inside the Modules element the AllUsersWebPart element. So if you want that a webpart is added to a site/area by default you can add an extra AllUsersWebPart element
for your custom webpart. See example

<AllUsersWebPart WebPartZoneID="MiddleRightZone" WebPartOrder="4"><![CDATA[<WebPart
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2"><Assembly>RecentDocsWebPart,
Version=1.0.0.1, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=7f713d9ae1e786b0</Assembly><TypeName>RecentDocsWebPart.RecentDocsWebPart</TypeName><Title>Recent
Documents Enhanced</Title><Description>Demo</Description><PartOrder>4</PartOrder><FrameType>TitleBarOnly</FrameType><AllowRemove>true</AllowRemove><AllowMinimize>true</AllowMinimize><IsVisible>true</IsVisible></WebPart>]]></AllUsersWebPart>

This may look fairly complex, but is actually fairly easy:

Copy <AllUsersWebPart WebPartZoneID="MiddleRightZone" WebPartOrder="4"><![CDATA[ and ;]]></AllUsersWebPart>

Add the custom webpart you want to add to the site definition to a webpartpage the normal way, and then click Export

The previous step will generate a DWP file - this actually a XML file, just take the contents of the file and paste it between the CDATA brackets

Unfortunately, this didn't work for the "My Site" so I tried it for the "Community Area" template and it didn't work for existing areas but only for newly created areas. Unfortunately this doesn't even work for the "My Site", even when users access your portal for whom the "My Site" still needs to be generated. I guess it will be the easiest to just open the "My Site" in FrontPage 2003 and add the webpart this way or create code which will add the webpart from code... I guess some people will call this YASQ, Yet Another SharePoint Quirk,....

RSS and SharePoint

Interesting posting on SharePoint newsgroups from Daniel Larson - he uploaded a powerpoint and the source code for a presenation about RSS and SharePoint.

For those of you who haven't heard about RSS - "RSS is an Xml dialect enabling syndication of content across the web. It is the internet standard for blogs, news sites, downloads, and more and is the technology behind the next big thing on the internet-syndicated communities. Syndication helps people and software communicate and interact across platforms and technologies much like Web Services, although the focus is clearly on human interaction. RSS 2.0 has become an internet standard that has a core set of functionality for syndication, and an extensible nature due to its simplicity. "

Windows SharePoint Services - Service Pack expected

This guy, First major change to SharePoint Service 2.0 - Service Pack 2 coming soon? , definitely seems to know more... but you can know find the actual details of what to expect in WSS SP2 on the Microsoft site. Some interesting stuff:

Support for IP-bound virtual servers

Support for advanced extranet configurations

Kerberos enabled by default

Windows SharePoint Services running on ASP.NET 2.0 (Whidbey)

Windows SharePoint Services support for Windows x64 editions

Consuming stored procedures with the DataView WebPart and SharePoint

A Data View Web Part displays a tabular representation of a filtered subset of a table on a Web Part Page. You can create data views from a large variety of data sources including databases, XML files, SharePoint lists, and so on.... These Data View Web Parts can be easily added to your Windows SharePoint Sites with FrontPage 2003.

However when you add a connection to a database, you will see that you can only consume tables and views from SQL Server - there is however a setting in WSS which you can alter to allow your webpart to use stored procedures.First enable custom query support for Windows SharePoint Services:

Browse to the Windows SharePoint Services Central Administration page.

Under Component Configuration click on Configure data retrieval service settings.

Check the Enable Data Retrieval Services checkbox.

Check the Enable update query support checkbox.

Click OK.

For more info check out the following articles:

Using frontpage 2003 to design customised sites

Using frontpage 2003 to build XML data driven sites

VS.Net 2005 beta 2 available

MSDN Subscribers can download Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation
You can also Order Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2
Download Visual C# 2005 Express Beta 2 for Windows/Console Development
Download Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Beta 2 for Web Development
Download Visual Web Developer Express 2005 Beta 2
If you have problems downloading Express or if you want to burn Express on a CD, follow the manual installation instructions

Go-Live - You can officially "Go-Live" with Beta 2 in a production environment

Another SharePoint, FrontPage, InfoPath & CMS link list

SharePoint Backup & Recovery Test plan

SharePoint Podcast (mp3)

SharePoint User Utility 2.1

Connect a SharePoint list with InfoPath

Creating InfoPath rules

SharePoint configuration analyzer

Building a custom SharePoint webservice for your InfoPath forms

Extending the save functionality in InfoPath 2003

FrontPage web packages & dynamic web templates

MCMS SharePoint list item placeholder

Fun with list templates and dataviews in SharePoint areas

Hotfix SharePoint language switch problem

SharePoint search webservice tester

Vignette Portal 7.2 and SharePoint

It seems that this release has all the things I actually want for SharePoint Portal Server -

The adoption of standards JSR 168 & WSRP - I know there is a WSRP toolkit for SharePoint on gotdotnet but never tried it ...

.

Enhanced out-of-the-box search capabilities that allow users to query a wide range of internal and external data sources - Hey SharePoint can already do this - but more control over the search engine would be nice

Improved personalization. - SharePoint already has some nice personalisation features - I however think that multilanguage are definitely a part of personalisation ... unfortunately SharePoint is not pretty good at multilingual scenarios

Improved & tightly integrated content management system. - What can I say Spark just doesn't go far enough and is more or less a hack....

sharepoint
.

Dynamic InfoPath forms impossible

Quite an interesting read about what happens when you try to create a pretty advanced InfoPath solution - Dynamic InfoPath Forms Impossible?

Indigo on MSDN TV

There is a nice video on MSDN TV about Indigo - Indigo is the managed communication stack that will ship with WinFX. It is the "V.Next" for ASP.NET Web Methods, .NET Remoting, Enterprise Services, System.Messaging, and WSE. Steve Swartz provides a brief conceptual overview of Indigo, walks through some code, and introduces you to his jackalope.

Geeks rule and MBAs drool

Great article - "Geeks rule and MBAs drool" - my favorite quotes from this quite entertaining rant:

If you ask me, and I'm biased, no software company can succeed unless there is a programmer at the helm. From Joel Spolsky

Fellow Geeks, we must strive for excellence not only in our code, but also in our interactions with Those Who Think HTML is a Programming Language. Drawing from a piece of our own wisdom literature, let us not forget the memorable words of Han Solo: Don't get cocky!

Free Java to .Net migration workshop

Microsoft offers a free Java to .Net migration workshop -

This eight part workshop contains over 15 hours of free training and provides detailed information on migrating existing applications and functionality from Java to the Microsoft .NET Framework. It includes how to map common J2SE and J2EE functionality to the equivalent .NET Framework functionality, and describes tools and techniques you can use to migrate J2SE and J2EE services to the .NET Framework. If you are a Java developer, this course is a great way to become acquainted with how to develop on and migrate applications to the .NET Framework. Each module and accompanying labs cover specific topic areas and are not dependent on each other, allowing you to choose specific modules and topics of interest. If you have questions or comments about the workshop, you can email java-net@microsoft.com.

I'm wondering if there is also a free .Net to Java migration workshop ;-) ....

Microsoft Exchange outsells IBM Lotus Notes

Source Forbes - IBM in denial over Lotus Notes - "Microsoft's Exchange has clawed its way to the top of the corporate e-mail market, displacing Notes/Domino, which once dominated e-mail and was the main reason IBM paid $3.2 billion to acquire Lotus in 1995."

Alerts in SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services

SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) both have their own mechanism for alerts. Here is a listing of the differences:

Windows SharePoint Services:

You an add alerts on lists, list items, document libraries and documents.

Alerts can only be send by e-mail

Alerts are managed on a site level basis - users can change their alerts by going to "Site Settings" > "My alerts on this site"

SharePoint Portal Server:

You can add alerts for people, site directory, news, areas, topics, search queries, documents, and backward-compatible document libraries.

Alerts can be send by e-mail and are displayed in the "My alerts" webpart on the "My site" - this webpart will only list the Portal alerts and not the ones you have created in WSS

You can manage the alerts from "Manage my alerts" on "My site"

There is however another place where you can manage your alerts just got to Outlook 2003. In the menubar you will find underneath Tools > Rules and alerts .... a place where you can delete exitsting alerts or even add new alerts.


References:

Alert Me: Parameters Passed to SearchAlertType.GetAlertCreationLink()

Managing alerts with Windows SharePoint Services

Overdocumented feature with SharePoint alerts

sharepoint

SharePoint Portal Server alerts not send by e-mail

I noticed this SharePoint bug already at a couple of SharePoint deployments. Users can create alerts both on their WSS sites (on lists, document libraries) as well as on the SharePoint Portal Server (on areas, persons, searches,...). The alerts from WSS sites are send by e-mail, but the alerts from the Portal are not send, they are only visible on their My Site. When you take a look at the logfiles - you will notice the following error in SPNOTIFICATIONSERVICE.log

02/07/05 16:00:23:047 UNK 00000000 00001204 Alert Notification could not access database. Database appears to be offline or tables are locked
02/07/05 16:00:23:047 UNK 00000000 00001204 The notification could not be generated temporarily. Retrying(limited). Notification details:{Seed Owner=0491436a-6170-4723-8737-b057395185e9 TypeId=AlertResultNotification SeedValue=2831;1;Feb 4 2005 2:36:19:513PM Tag=21} Portal site details:{site=PORTAALSITE RZST id=9fd4be2e-db61-48e6-ba70-3bbdc00433a2} Exception information: Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.Alerts.NotificationDataTemporarilyUnavailableException: Failed to generate notification:Alert Notification could not access database. Database appears to be offline or tables are locked ---> Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.Alerts.SecurityAccessCheckFailedException: Tripoli Security trimmer failed and returned a null array at Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.Alerts.x.a(PortalContext A_0, SecurityTrimmer A_1, DataTable A_2, Hashtable A_3, Boolean A_4, WindowsIdentity A_5, Byte[] A_6, Boolean[]& A_7, Int32& A_8) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.Alerts.x.a(at A_0, PortalContext A_1, SecurityTrimmer A_2, DataSet& A_3, Guid A_4, WindowsIdentity A_5, Byte[] A_6) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.Alerts.at.a(Guid A_0, String A_1, SqlParameter[] A_2, WindowsIdentity A_3, Byte[] A_4) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.Alerts.at.a(Guid A_0, String A_1, SqlParameter[] A_2) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.Alerts.j.a(String A_0, SqlParameter[] A_1) --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.Alerts.j.a(String A_0, SqlParameter[] A_1) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.Alerts.NotificationTypes.a.a() at Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.Alerts.ai.c()

This is a bug which you can solve with a hotfix from Microsoft Product Support Services - for more information goto
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;834859. This hotfix will fix the API call that
the alert service is using to read the TGGAU attribute. This hotfix really should be applied to all of your SPS machines in your environment, assuming you have more than one, but the most important one is the SPS server that has the Job component on it. You can check this from the Central Administration page by choosing the Topology manager and reviewing the assignments.

sharepoint

Visual Studio 2005 Beta Experience

"Only 16 days before the Beta Experience starts...

Join us on the Beta Experience journey to discover the new features of Visual Studio 2005. You will receive the latest beta versions of Visual Studio 2005 Team System and SQL Server 2005, and additionally a hands-on comprehensive training project to help you get the most out of Beta 2. The Beta Experience will also ensure you stay up-to-date with Visual Studio 2005 all the way from beta until launch through the Beta Experience newsletter - bringing you expert insights, resources and local event announcements.

The Beta Experience will be available in your region from the 25th of April."

Find more info about Visual Studio 2005 Beta Experience

New SharePoint and CMS MVPs

It seems that there are some new MVPs out there - congrats to all of you and keep those code samples coming ;-)

Andrew Connell (MS CMS)

Patrick Tisseghem (SharePoint)

Jan Tielens (SharePoint)

P.S. The last two are both Belgians - amazing how big SharePoint is in Belgium

SharePoint on GotdotNet

Gotdotnet has a nice collection of SharePoint tools and code samples as well:

SharePoint Query Builder Tool - Windows forms based tool which allows you to connect to a portal and create search queries in a easy way.

Extending and enhancing the SharePoint Portal Server User Interface - Code samples

SharePoint List Browser/Copier Demo Application - An example of what can be done using a WinForms smart client to access SharePoint sites via SOAP.

Upload a file to a SharePoint library via the FrontPage RPC protocol - Example of how to upload a file to a SharePoint library via the FrontPage RPC protocol, including check-in and the setting of custom metadata.

SharePoint Document Library Event Handler for Parsing JPEG Images - Source code for a SharePoint document library event handler that parses JPEG images, extracts their EXIF properties, then updates entries with those properties,modifying the libraries' fields accordingly if needed.

What's New Web Part for SharePoint Sites -
Source code for a Web Part that walks through an entire site using the WSS object model and returns the most recently changed entries.

sharepoint

SharePoint - a miscellaneous link collection

It is amazing how much stuff you can find about SharePoint, here's a collection of links with info from the previous month.

Metalogix Migration Manager SharePoint/CMS Demos - Microsoft certified partners can now request a license of Metalogix Migration Manager to prepare demos or proof of concepts

Paging and the Data View Web Part

WebPart Resources

Webparts from SharePoint to ASP.Net 2.0

WSS XML intellisense file - Updated support for VS.Net intellisense regarding WSS development

Stramits SPS Granular backup tool

SharePoint info in Outlook Today

Customizing SharePoint lists (MSDN)

Matts SPS AST - SharePoint Advanced Search Tools - extends traditional SharePoint Search

SharePoint webpart future according to Mike Fitzmaurice

InfoPath sample templates

Disable FrontPage access for Portals

SharePoint rollup webpart

Randomelements - web part roundup

SharePoint sites are data. Not applications

SharePoint Stress Testing

U2U CAML Query Builder and Execution Tool Released

Overview of IFilters

Integrating SharePoint and Project Server 2003 (Webcast)

Stramits CAML viewer

sharepoint

Microsoft to target vertical markets

Quite an interesting article - Microsoft's grand plan to go vertical ...

SharePoint 2003 Resource Portal

About SharePoint 2003 Resource Portal:
This site has been developed 100% in Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003. It started as a way for SharePoint Solutions to a) begin cataloging all of the SPS 2003 resources we had found on the Internet for our internal team's use, and b) as a small project to put the great features of SPS 2003 to good use.


sharepoint

Mike about SharePoint

It seems that Mike Fitzmaurice is blogging again:

Dev Tools: What We Can Do and What You'll Have To Do - There will be no CAML editor for v3 of Sharepoint ...

WSS Isn't Just For Collaboration

CAML is here to stay - CAML is too good to kill,... mmm I can't say that I agree - I definitely think it is a developers nightmare. For those of you who think that ASP was spaghetti code, take a look at CAML... Stramit seems to agree about this one - "... so UNdocumented, such apoor example or so complex , nothing really to fall in love with ..."

Good "SharePoint Development" = Good .NET Development

sharepoint

Visual Basic 6 - Dead and ...

VB6 - six feet under....

Read your blogs within VS.Net

Whow, way cool, an addin for VS.Net to read blogs and wait it gets even better - it's open source... Download it here.

VS.Net and SQL 2005 shipping dates slip again

From PC Pro UK News:
Microsoft has announced that its next-generation software development suite, Visual Studio 2005, and its long-awaited new database system, SQL Server 2005, will now appear in 'the second half' of 2005. ...

PHP .Net Compiler Phalanger

From Jeff Sandquist...

"We just posted a video interview on Channel 9 from the lab with the folks behind the PHP compiler.

Tomas Matousek and Ladislav Prosek talk about their PHP .NET compiler, Phalanger. These guys don't work at Microsoft, Charles Torre ran into them at a recent CLR compiler lab held on Microsoft's main campus. Very cool stuff. You can learn more on their Web site"

Microsoft Project Tesla - Virtual filesystem with tags

The problem with blogs is, that you can't really see if somebody is full of s**t or not - anyway Project Tesla definitely sounds way coolrel="tag" style="color:#ffffff">microsoft

Use group policy to manage Outlook - SharePoint interaction

Great posting from Bart :
"You can use Group Policy to set policies that manage how Outlook and Windows SharePoint Services interact for users in your organization. You can set a policy to specify the time interval between information synchronizations or you can disallow linking altogether. You can change the synchronization interval to make it longer, if, for example, users are linked from Outlook to a large group of Contacts which would trigger a time-consuming synchronization; or shorter, if users need access to updated information at all times...." Read more

sharepoint

SharePoint integrated BPM evaluation

Great comparison of BPM solutions by Bob Mixon, feature comparison of Skelta, Captaris and K2.Net.

This guy who works for Captaris doesn't seem to agree...) - For a more complete reply read Comments on Bob Mixons Review of workflow
sharepoint

Active Server Pages error ''ASP 0131'' - Disallowed Parent Path The Include file cannot contain ''..'' to indicate the parent directory.

Apparently IIS configuration on a Windows 2003 server disallows the usage of ".." in ASP include files. You can easily solve it in this way

1. Go to your IIS Manager
2. Right click your web site
3. Choose Properties >
4. Select Home Directory Tab
5. Click ‘Configuration’ button
6. Select App Options Tab
7. Check the Enable Parent Paths
8. Click OK and your new configuration will be saved.

Microsoft to target Healthcare market - an update

Interesting comments on Microsofts recent press release about its Healthcare initiatives - Digital Pharma What?

Microsoft acquires Groove Networks - a short synopsis

I had heard of Groove before, but never actually tried any of their tools. Definitely something I should try out if I read all the comments about it. I guess it is definitely a serious blow now that the inventor of Lotus - Ray Ozzie has moved to Microsoft territory.

Collection of links related to the acquisition:

Microsoft to name Ray Ozzie Tech Chief (SmartMoney)

Groove - Microsoft middleware move (Internet News)

No surprise in Microsoft acquiring Groove

Microsoft takes a strategic leap with Groove

Microsoft gets into Groove

Microsoft grabs Groove and its guru

Selection of blog entries:

Microsoft acquires Groove Networks

Let's Get that GDN+Groove Thang ON!

Microsoft to acquire Groove, but will they fix it ...

From Groove to Burst

Microsoft's Groove thing

Visual Studio Team System Team System on MSDN ASP.Net 2.0 Tour

A couple of weeks ago, the MSDN ASP.Net 2.0 arrrived in Belgium, unfortunately David Platt and Dave Webster were still in Copenhague. So we got another interesting speaker,
Prashant Sridharan which is a group manager for VS Team System (He arrived at 5 in the morning after getting a phone call at 1h30 at night ...and did a great job...). I hadn't seen a lot about it and I have to say I'm pretty impressed, here are some highlights

Integrated unit testing tools (including code coverage tracking),profiling tools and code analysis tools (with a predefined set of rules which you can completely modify)

Creating code from within your architecture modeling tools

You have a complete designer surface for all of your classes and you can switch between visual design mode and code mode. The modeling is not UML2.0 compliant but you can plug in your own modeling tools

Team system will ship with 2 different process methodologies which you can fully adapt (a process editor will be shipped as well...):

MSF Agile which you can already download separatelyhere.

A more formal methodology which is CMMI Level 3 compliant

You will be able to enforce rules from these methodogies within your VS.Net e.g. do not allow check in of code if no workitem is associated

Some more info is to be found on the VS.Net Team System site

Domain Specific Language (DSL) Toolkit

Together with VS.Net 2005 a new exciting technology will released which you can already explore,the Domain Specific Language (DSL) Toolkit. The DSL toolkit allows you to building custom visual designers based on the modeling technology in Visual Studio 2005.

Blogging is good for your career...

Lets try to advance my career a little bit, just writing this blog item should already help according to this posting - Blogging is Good for Your Career?

1. You have to get noticed to get promoted.
2. You have to get noticed to get hired.
3. It really impresses people when you say “Oh, I’ve written about that, just google for XXX and I’m on the top page” or “Oh, just google my name.”
4. No matter how great you are, your career depends on communicating. The way to get better at anything, including communication, is by practicing. Blogging is good practice.
5. Bloggers are better-informed than non-bloggers. Knowing more is a career advantage.
6. Knowing more also means you’re more likely to hear about interesting jobs coming open.
7. Networking is good for your career. Blogging is a good way to meet people.
8. If you’re an engineer, blogging puts you in intimate contact with a worse-is-better 80/20 success story. Understanding this mode of technology adoption can only help you.
9. If you’re in marketing, you’ll need to understand how its rules are changing as a result of the current whirlwind, which nobody does, but bloggers are at least somewhat less baffled.
10. It’s a lot harder to fire someone who has a public voice, because it will be noticed.

Microsoft and Intel to target Healthcare market

From Davids blog ...

Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp. have partnered to create products and services targeted at European healthcare providers, who the vendors say have antiquated IT infrastructures.

The partnership to create an E-Health Integration Platform currently covers Germany, Austria and Switzerland, but the companies are looking to expand across Europe and possibly beyond, representatives for Microsoft and Intel said Thursday. The partnership agreement will be formally signed Monday at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany.

The companies plan to create several product and service bundles for healthcare providers. They currently have 20 projects running with several healthcare providers, including the biggest telemedicine project in Germany, according to Jens Dommel, manager for the healthcare sector at Microsoft in Germany.

While the partnership is limited to three countries today, Microsoft and Intel are keen to replicate it elsewhere, said Garbis Bedoian, business development manager at Intel in Germany.

"This is a local initiative created by Microsoft and Intel in Germany, but we are taking it to our European headquarters to broaden it," he said.

Healthcare is a key area for both vendors as it has the biggest growth in IT spending in Europe, Bedoian said. The spending is driven by upgrades and government-backed initiatives to streamline healthcare services, he said. "In German hospitals, the IT infrastructure is 10 to 15 years behind what we see in other sectors," he said.

The telemedicine project is with hospital group Asklepios Kliniken GmbH. The objective is to electronically connect about 1,000 doctors and specialists to the group's hospitals. The system will support capabilities such as remote diagnoses, as well as more basic features such as online billing, Microsoft's Dommel said.

Another project is for a "medical dashboard" that will make all of a hospital's applications accessible through one user interface. With help from partners, Microsoft and Intel are delivering the first dashboard to Lahn Dill Kliniken GmbH, a Wetzlar, Germany-based operator of three hospitals, Dommel said. This project was begun off in the third quarter of 2004.

The medical dashboard uses Microsoft software including Windows Server 2003, SQL Server, SharePoint Portal Server, Windows XP and Office 2003. The software runs on servers equipped with Intel processors and other hardware including Tablet PCs, according to Microsoft and Intel.

Once developed, Microsoft and Intel plan to use the system as a reference case to help it sell to other customers. The information will be shared with systems integrators who may be able to provide related services, Dommel and Bedoian said.

Random collection of SharePoint links

Logparser 2.2 - How to check what your users are searching for in your portal

WPPackager documentation error

Macaw discussion board - Enhanced implementation of discussion boards in Windows SharePoint Services.

Analyzing SharePoint logs

SharePoint DVWP: xslt limitations...

Formatting SharePoint schema.xml

Best practices for developing webparts (webcast 14/03/2005)

How to create WSS top level sites under the root of a virtual server

A conversation about SPWebCollection

sharepoint

Microsoft using Sun hardware

The world has gone crazy, check this out:

"For example, the EEC (Microsoft's Enterprise Engineering Center) has recently sealed a deal to partner with Sun to deploy two racks worth of Sun's latest generation of AMD64 gear running Windows Server 2003 and an outstanding mid-range SAN unit to make them available for our customers to conduct testing engagements. The Sun people we've be working with have proven to be outstanding partners and we're very excited about working together...."

Read more about it

Office 12 Preview (Updated 10/3/2005)

Nice article about what features to expect in Office 12 .... (Updated: the article has been removed at the request of Microsoft - I should have taken a copy.... Does anybody still have the article content?

Coveo Enterprise Search for SharePoint Technologies

From Angus Logan:
Coveo recently announced CES for SharePoint Technologies,...
"Customers recognized and requested the enhancements that CES can offer for the SPT user, including:

Intelligent summarization and concept extraction technologies, both of which help users optimize their search experience.
A “View as HTML” feature that provides cached HTML versions with highlighted query terms for Microsoft Office documents, Adobe PDFs and other non-HTML documents.
Improved relevance with query capabilities based on powerful syntax that supports spelling suggestion, stemming, exact phrase and Boolean operators.
Configurable search preferences that allow users to tailor the search experience to their liking.
Advanced handling of metadata and XML data to provide more accurate search results.
Plug-in-style integration with SPT so that users are presented with the familiar look and feel of the SPT environment.
Robust search technology that leverages existing SPT security to control access to sensitive company data.
....
Product versions supported by CES for SPT will include SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 (WSS).
"

But unfortunately I didn't find any additional info except for the press release ....

sharepoint

Enterprise Search Strategy centers on SharePoint

From Matthew Cosier
Nice article about the Microsoft Search strategy
sharepoint

About SharePoint, CMS, uncertainty and IBF

The software engineering uncertainty principle - Interesting article about why uncertainty is inherent to software development

Windows SharePoint Services and session state

WordProcessingML and Java - ...found through John Durants blog)

Customizing Microsoft Office Information Bridge Framework for Microsoft CRM

Enabling SSL Protection on MCMS Sites

The intersection of Objects and Services - OO design doesn't work so well when creating outer boundaries of programs, therefore we see a lot more articles appearing about Service Oriented Architecture.

Microsoft CRM 2005 - Next version focus areas

The learning blogosphere - Interesting posting about how blogs can be used to enhance the learning experience

Introduction to Team Architect Edition Application Designer, Part 1

Customizing list item forms in Windows SharePoint Services - Newly released MSDN article

mscms

sharepoint

Team System dogfood

The guys from VS.Net teamsystem are using Team Foundation Server for their own code, check out some of the TeamSystem statistics

VS.Net Team System version 2

We haven't seen the final release of VS.Net Team System yet but I already heard about features we can expect in version 2:

Functionality testing will be made available, a winform functional testing tool will be introduced based on the Avalon framework

VS.Net Team System current focus is on people close to the development team, version 2 will expand to other roles within your companies and will offer features such as portfolio management (for managing large groups of related projects) through tight integration with Project Server, integrated systems management for system engineers, ... Expect also tighter integration with products such as SharePoint Portal Server.

VS.Net 2005 powertoys

The guys from the VS.Net 2005 team are already working together with the developer community to create new VS.Net powertoys, check out the VS Core Community PowerToys.

Portals and industry knowledge

I was last week at a customer for a proof of concept of a SharePoint Portal Server solution when I heard mentionning the term FPFQ. For all of you SharePoint geeks, don't worry this is not a technical portal term. It seems that FPFQ stands for "First Pass, First Quality" a production metric which is used in industries which use bulk materials. A lot of terms like this surfaced when building a balanced scorecard solution based on the Business Scorecard solution accelerator. This however shows that you will need a lot of domain or industry specific knowledge when implementing portal solutions since these solutions typically touch the core of the business of your customers.

Problem - Edit a document requires a SharePoint compatible application

Great support article to solve the problem "Edit a document requires a SharePoint compatible application"

Rumors of VS.Net 2005 delay false - it will ship late summer 2005

I saw a presentation from Prashant Sridharan today (Lead product manager VS.Net) today and he explicitly stated that VS.Net 2005 and SQL Server 2005 will ship together late summer 2005. It seems that these can't be released separately since VS.Net Team System relies heavily on SQL Server 2005.

Feedback about VS.Net 2005

Did you know that you can give feedback about VS.Net 2005 as well as some other technologies. you will also see an overview of bugs and change request for which you an vote. Unfortunately it is not meant to be used for SharePoint,...